Daddy's Girl
by carpetinflight
Summary: Five times Katniss lost her father.


Katniss is almost five when her father dies.

The baby cries and screams, wailing for hours. Katniss carries her carefully into the dark room where her mother is curled up in the bed, but there's no more milk for the baby when her mother won't eat or drink herself.

The baby cries. Katniss gives her tea, and it helps a little, but not enough.

It's hard to think when the baby is crying so much. The sound is horrible. She puts a little sleep syrup in the tea, and then she can think, finally.

She sits on the porch and thinks about it. The baby is hungry, and she needs milk. Mama's still sleeping, and she won't eat, and her milk is all gone.

Who has milk?

Katniss wraps the sleeping baby carefully in a clean blanket, and walks through the seam to the Hawthorne house. Their daddy was killed in the mine, too, but their mama isn't sleeping. She tries not to think about that.

"What do you want?" Gale Hawthorne asks, glaring at her through a crack in the door. Katniss sticks her tongue out at him.

"Who's there, Gale?" calls a lady's voice, and he opens the door wider. Sure enough, there is Gale's mama, sitting in a chair and nursing baby Rory.

"Miz Hawthorne?" Katniss asks, trying to be nice and polite, like her mama taught her. "My sister is hungry, and-"

Mrs. Hawthorne looks sad, but she beckons Katniss over. "Bring her here, sweetheart."

"I can help," Katniss says. She looks around the little house, and sees the baby's things, the laundry piled up. "I can cook, and clean, and help."

"Thank you, Katniss," Mrs. Hawthorne replies. "That would be wonderful."

Gale glares at her every day for the first year, but he warms up eventually.

* * *

><p>Katniss is eight when her father dies.<p>

She knows how to pull the bow, how to aim and fire the arrow, how to take down game. But knowledge and ability are two different things, and her arms are too thin and too weak to put any torque into the weapon.

"I need you to take care of Mama," she tells Prim. At four, she's old enough to take this responsibility seriously, but not old enough to understand that it's false. Katniss just needs for Prim to stay in one place so she won't worry.

Katniss finds some snares in the woods, although she doesn't know who left them. She copies them as best she can, making crude imitations with whatever she can find. A few rabbits wander into her traps, and once a possum, but it's not enough.

Weakened with hunger and lack of sleep, she stumbles through the forest on heavy feet, making too much noise and scaring off game.

Her toe catches on a tree root and Katniss falls hard, sprawling in the dirt and struggling to breathe. She thinks about not getting up, about just laying here on the ground until she's no one's worry anymore. Eventually she manages to stand again, though, and resumes trudging through the trees.

The next time she trips, she isn't so lucky. Her small body tumbles down a steep hill, crashing into rocks and tree trunks. When she regains consciousness, her head aches and her leg is bent at an unnatural angle.

She doesn't get up again.

* * *

><p>Katniss is eleven when her father dies.<p>

She's big enough to draw the bow, smart enough to remember her hunting lessons. She even remembers the things he taught her about edible plants, eventually. Dandelion salads and mint tea, katniss roots and wild strawberries keep her alive long enough to turn those few hunting lessons into real expertise.

But eleven years is not long enough for all the lessons she needs to learn in life, and there are still many things she doesn't understand.

When her mother crawls into bed and won't come out, staring with blank eyes at the wall, Katniss doesn't understand. Life is drawn in shades of black and white, and she cannot see the shades of gray. It isn't a sickness that makes her mother weak, it's love.

So when the baker's youngest son smiles at her in school, she looks away. When Gale plucks an orange leaf from her hair and brushes his fingers against her cheek, she frowns and steps back.

There's only one person in the world she truly loves, one person that can never be taken from her, and that's Prim.

* * *

><p>Katniss is fifteen when her father dies.<p>

She knows how to hunt, how to find game and make snares. She knows which plants in the forest can be eaten, and which to stay away from.

She is strong and well-fed, and her body is beginning to show it. Katniss has never starved in her life, and although she is naturally small, her breasts and hips curve gracefully.

A boy taunts her in the school hallway, and Katniss punches him in the nose, hard enough that everyone around hears the _crack_ of it breaking.

She is not so brave in the early twilight of winter, when she's slipping through a back alley with her game bag and old Cray corners her.

"What've you got to trade today, Girlie?" he asks, looking her up and down. It's clear that he's not interested in wild turkey.

Katniss backs away and runs, shaking with fear. She doesn't even see the baker's son, standing on the street with a grim look on his face.

She notices the black eye he has the next day, though, and the scrapes on his hand. She sees the crutch Cray carries for weeks afterward.

This time, she finds a way to say _thank you_.

* * *

><p>Katniss is seventeen when her father dies.<p>

She pulls back on her bow and fires Beetee's wire into the force field that surrounds the Quarter Quell, and she isn't afraid. Not afraid to stand up to the Capitol, not afraid to fight for what she believes in, and not afraid to love the blue-eyed boy beside her.

She should be.

President Snow's retribution is swift and total. When the bombs fall on District Twelve, there are no survivors.


End file.
